Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè: Kelvin Kellman’s Inheritance

Kevin Kellman. Source: solsticelitmag.org

At any time, it has been an interesting exercise doing a study of Nigerian poetry, rewarding for anyone who appreciates the genre, because, no matter your taste or expectation, you are sure to find a poet that caters to it. You only need to pick a poet or period. Here is why Kelvin Kellman catches our attention: to sample his work will expand our understanding of contemporary Nigerian poetry.

To begin with, we must locate Kellman within the literary tradition he inherited, between the 1950s and 1980s, the period that signalled modern African and Nigerian poetry. Poetry was basically a vehicle of decolonisation and radicalism for poets disenchanted with colonialism and the failures associated with postcolonialism: leadership corruption, military interregnum and general social decadence. Texts such as West African Verse (1967) edited by Donatus Nwoga, Labyrinths (1969) by Christopher Okigbo, Poems of Black Africa (1975) edited by Wole Soyinka, The Poet Lied (1980) by Odia Ofeimun, Voices from the Fringe: An ANA Anthology of New Nigerian Poetry (1988) edited by Harry Garuba cannot be forgotten. They have become touchstone marking those times and beyond. But since the year 2000, following the military handover of power to civilian rule in 1999, the new millennium has provided a new context for Nigerian poets, inspiring entirely new themes in addition to reinforcing older concerns. Of course, by the middle of the second decade of the millennium, an indisputable canon had emerged, The Sahara Testaments by Tade Ipadeola, as espoused by the foundational critic of Nigerian literature, Dan Izevbaye.

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Shadi Rohana: Cervantes and the Arabs (Don Quixote in Translation)

This is the text of a paper given at the the Humanities Institute of the University of California at Santa Cruz on 22 May 2019

The Aljamiado Manuscript, a Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir) manuscript from 16th-century Arévalo written in Castilian using the Arabic alphabet. Source: ballandalus.wordpress.com

The story which I’m about to tell you today is the history —or, rather, la historia, which in the Spanish language means both story and history— of how Miguel de Cervantes’ novel El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, or, in English, The Valorous and Witty Knight-Errant Don Quixote of the Mancha, was translated into Arabic.

Two weeks ago, after I finished writing this first paragraph in my study room in Mexico City, I began reading it out loud to myself to test how it may sound to you. However, back then in Mexico City, as I reached the written word “Quixote,” how it is written in English —Q U I X O T E— my reading was interrupted by the silence of the following question: How am I to pronounce to you, in English, the name of our world-famous caballero? Am I going to pronounce it, here in Santa Cruz, as دون كيهوتِ, as some of my north-American friends do —with an “h” sound in the middle— or the Anglicized دون كْويكْسوتِ, the way many English-language speakers in Britain, to my surprise, still do?^[1]

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𝐹𝑜𝓊𝓃𝒹 Taste of Hell

They ate at a place called El Rey del Taco. At the entrance there was a neon sign: a kid wearing a big crown mounted on a burro that regularly kicked up its hind legs and tried to throw him. The boy never fell, although in one hand he was holding a taco and in the other a kind of scepter that could also serve as a riding crop. The inside was decorated like a McDonald’s, but in an unsettling way. The chairs were straw, not plastic. The tables were wooden. The floor was covered in big green tiles, some of them printed with desert landscapes and episodes from the life of El Rey del Taco. From the ceiling hung pinatas featuring more adventures of the boy king, always accompanied by the burro. Some of the scenes depicted were charmingly ordinary: the boy, the burro, and a one-eyed old woman, or the boy, the burro, and a well, or the boy, the burro, and a pot of beans. Other scenes were set firmly in the realm of the fantastic: in some the boy and the burro fell down a ravine, in others, the boy and the burro were tied to a funeral pyre, and there was even one in which the boy threatened to shoot his burro, holding a gun to its head. It was as if El Rey del Taco weren’t the name of a restaurant but a character in a comic book Fate happened never to have heard of. Still, the feeling of being in a McDonald’s persisted. Maybe the waitresses and waiters, very young and dressed in military uniforms (Chucho Flores told him they were dressed up as federales), helped create the impression. This was certainly no victorious army. The young waiters radiated exhaustion, although they smiled at the customers. Some of them seemed lost in the desert that was El Rey del Taco. Others, fifteen-year-olds or fourteen-year-olds, tried in vain to joke with some of the diners, men on their own or in pairs who looked like government workers or cops, men who eyed them grimly, in no mood for jokes. Some of the girls had tears in their eyes, and they seemed unreal, faces glimpsed in a dream.

“This place is like hell,” he said to Rosa Amalfitano.

“You’re right,” she said, looking at him sympathetically, “but the food isn’t bad.”

“I’ve lost my appetite,” said Fate.

“As soon as they put a plate of tacos in front of you it’ll come back,” said Rosa Amalfitano.

“I hope you’re right,” said Fate.

— from 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Natasha Wimmer

2004 (2008)

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